


Here Comes the Cavalry

by DancerInTheShadows



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angels, Demons, Depressed Castiel, Destroyed America, Dragon!Dean Winchester - Freeform, Dragons, Eldritch Abominations, Gen, Mage!Sam Winchester, Magic, Post-Apocalypse, Reunions, Self-Hatred, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-04-25 23:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14389755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DancerInTheShadows/pseuds/DancerInTheShadows
Summary: After the Breaking, and the evacuations, and everything, Castiel was not expecting the ruins of America to be anything more than that: Ruins. He was not expecting a dedicated fighting force, he was not expecting epic battles on a scale he hasn't seen since before humanity, he was not expecting survivors.He certainly wasn't expecting to be caught up in all of this, particularly not in a massive battle that more likely than not will result in the deaths of all involved. At least until the cavalry arrives.





	1. Demons

**Author's Note:**

> This story started out as a snippet from a larger work I was hoping to write, and then turned into something all on its own. It's a bit of a far-fetched setting, but I hope you like it.  
> (Note: they're facing about 300 demons during the first chapter. Just wanted to get that out there.)

Demons swirled outside, pounding against the windows, making the dragonmage wardings on the walls flicker in intermittent bursts of light and shadow. The effect was disorienting, like strobe lights, making the humans weave erratically through the uncertain light.

Castiel watched the circle of mages crouched in the center of the room, unaffected by the flashes. The mages were the ones maintaining the wards against the demons, and their auras swirled above them, invisible to those without the sight to see them, mingling in eye-watering color combinations, motifs mixing into an abstract work of art that filled the room, tendrils extending to feed power to the spells and sigils that covered the walls.

Dragons stood guard around them, snarling whenever anyone wandered too close, and Messengers (he refused to call these beings Angels, not when they hadn’t been created with all the others, not when he’d never seen them before, not when they weren’t _family_ ) stood at the windows, watching the swirling clouds of black smoke, calling back warnings when a ward flickered or a demon curled too close for too long.

The whole thing was unsettling, even to someone who’d been through what Castiel’d been through. Even as a Seraph, (a true Seraph, with the six wings and power to accompany the title, not just called that because they need some way to differentiate the old, extinct angels (his brothers and sisters) from these new ones) he wouldn’t have been able to stand against an assault like this for very long, particularly not when the demons were Tainted like this. He hadn’t thought that demons could _be_ Tainted, not until a storm of them had swept across the protective Atlantic ocean and laid siege to the Men of Letters compounds here. His powers were useless against these things, not without dragonsblood to counter the Taint, and the three Messengers that _had_ drunk dragonsblood and had come with the two thunders that’d been sent over as emissaries of the Dragonstorm had barely the power of a full angel when they were all working together. But even their power was more useful than his against Taint. Now that the old powers had fallen back to make room for the new ones, he was useless. Obsolete. It was just a matter of time before he went down blaze-of-glory, the way the Winchesters had always wanted.

One of the Hunters waiting in the room wandered up to him. “How can you be so calm?”

He tilted his head to look at him, a Latino man named Cesar who claimed to have worked a case with Sam and Dean, hunting bisaan in Colorado. His husband, Jesse, watched from across the room. Castiel could sense his uncertainty, radiating off of him, focused mainly on the demon smoke roiling just beyond the window, but also on Cesar, wary of the angel next to the Latino man.

“Why wouldn’t I be calm?” Castiel asked. The wards were holding and looked like they’d keep holding, and the mages had managed to send out a call for help to the Dragonstorm. All they had to do was wait.

Cesar looked at him oddly, wariness and curiosity changing to surprise. “I guess you really aren’t as human as you look, huh?”

Castiel was about to reply somewhere along the lines of “I _am_ an angel” when a sudden shift in the swirling pattern above the mages was accompanied by a burst of chatter in dragontongue. He twisted to focus on the change, ignoring the way Cesar asked him what was going on.

The thunderrider among the mages was altering his wards, boosting the power supply and simplifying the sigils. The other two mages were altering their own nets of power, making room for the new wards as he began to pass off the feeder tendrils.

As the web of light shifted, the thunderrider stepped out of the circle of mages, the crystalline white glow of enchanted gemstones hovering around his head. His comm was alight with ruby energy, pulses of light running up and down the metal wires that were attached to his head. The leader of the Messengers stepped forward, activating his own comm and speaking in rapid Enochian.

Castiel stepped forward, and a pair of dragons stepped forward to block his path, pulling long knives that gleamed with an oily shine, obviously mage-treated to harm Tainted. The blades would do nothing to him, though. With the extinction of angels, and the loss of Heaven and the angelic forges, angel blades had become a rare commodity, most of them shattered with the deaths of their bearers, or lost in the wilds that America had become. His own was safely tucked away in his Grace, protected. Despite the fact that it wasn’t mage-treated, it was still one of the few things that could hurt a being like him.

Physically, anyways.

The Messenger thunderrider lifted his head to look over at them, and snapped a command to let him through in dragontongue. A quick, sharp dialogue later, the dragons reluctantly stepped aside, and Castiel stepped past them.

The mage regarded him warily, one hand still on the control gem of his comm, bloody light spilling over his talons, orange-yellow eyes narrowed. Castiel stared back at him calmly, letting some of his power show in his aura, highlighting the shadows of his wings on his back. He might have been redeemed, (twice, no less) but a once a fallen angel, always a fallen angel, to borrow the phrasing from C. S. Lewis, and his once silver-blue wings were the color of night and twilight now, a clear sign that he’d rebelled.

Well, clear if they knew what it meant.

The Messenger apparently didn’t. He stared wide-eyed down at Castiel, wings shifting behind him. “ **I’m. . . I’m honored that you would see fit to-** ” He spoke Enochian, but with an odd accent, almost reminiscent of Dumah’s clipped tones. Castiel cut him off.

“What’s going on?” He spoke in English. These beings didn’t deserve the honor of Enochian. The mage looked at him, then back down at the Messenger, who had fallen back a step with the abrupt dismissal.

“ **Um. . .  The cavalry’s just about to arrive. Message from Shadowbane that they’re just above us, and they’ll try to draw off the demons.** “

“Shadowbane?”

“ **One of the generals, the mage. He has. . . unusual powers, regarding demons. I don’t know why he came in person, though. Normally they’d just send a Seraphim or someone less essential to the fight.** ” Castiel blinked, hiding his twisting emotions. If the generals hadn’t come themselves, he might have seen one of his brothers again. Although he knew it was pointless, he couldn’t help a twinge of dislike for the unseen people that had robbed him of that chance.

One of the dragons standing behind them spoke, a tiny, unshifted woman. “I heard he was a Hunter, Before. They know how to deal with demons better than any Seraph. Uh, sorry. No offense.” She glanced sidelong at Castiel, shoulders curling in on herself like wings. He ignored her, focusing on the mage. The Messenger dipped his head to the dragon, an oddly angelic gesture. Castiel glared. Who were these people, who claimed to be of his kind, who spoke his language like it was theirs? They were _not_ angels. The angels were dead.

The scream of the demons outside changed, and light began to filter through the darkness, real daylight, not the flickering ward-light. It shone sporadically, but it was there.

Dragons flocked to the windows, wards sliding around to the edges of the glass panes to make an opening they could see through. The demons had shifted, some of them moving their assault from the compound to the dragon outside. From what little of the dragon he could make out, it was truly _massive_ , almost bigger than any other he’d seen, and a shiny, glossy black interspersed with gold, flickering around its outline like fire.

More and more demons were peeling away from the assault, whirling in a ring around the dragon, and he turned, storming towards the exit, missing the way his old coat would catch the air and flare behind him. One of the Messengers intercepted him, lifting one delicate hand to stop him.

**“I am sorry, Seraph, but you cannot exit quite yet. Though Shadowbane my be adept at destroying demons, he cannot afford to risk all our lives to protect you.”**

**“Let him work. The battle will be over soon,”** another Messenger cut in, smiling up at Castiel. He shot the being a glare that made him recoil, blue eyes going wide, shoulders stretching like flaring wings. Both of them shrunk away, leaving him staring at the door, waiting for the wards to relax and let him out.

The world shook like a hundred dragons had just landed outside, and everyone in the room flocked towards the windows, peering out through the gleaming sigils. The black dragon had been forced down, snapping at the swirling demons, trying to catch the air and get back up, but every time he did one of them would slam his wings to the side or to the wrong angle. Everywhere his teeth or front talons brushed, fire flared along black smoke, destroying the Taint woven through them, but the demons just kept on attacking.

Faintly, through the flickering streams, he could see a figure on the dragon’s back, blazing with fire and power. Demons flared like embers, screamed in a register very few could hear when they touched him, or when his magic wove around them like golden nets, but there were too many, and more were joining them, roiling up from holes in the ground and spearing out of the sky like dark lightning.

“Screw this.” He hauled the door open, weaving his own power around the wards to keep them intact, and passed out of the bubble of safety without disturbing it, slamming the door behind him. Demons swung towards him, and he pulled his blade out of its hiding place, storming towards the battle.

He’d been told that he looked quite impressive while doing that, with his coat flaring behind him and eyes blazing. He supposed it was little less impressive now that was dressed in a faded t-shirt and jeans, and with the Taint saturating the air robbing the blue glow from his eyes. Still, he could kill demons, and it wasn’t like he was any use anyways.

A demon rushed him, and to his surprise, it wasn’t Tainted, the dusty black of its smoke empty of the liquid void of Taint. He lifted a hand, the light just barely showing, and the twisted soul of the thing tore itself to pieces against his power. The mage looked up from his battle, golden eyes widening, the spikes of his mane lifting in surprise, before a demon got too close to his dragon and he whipped around to defend. He lifted one palm and the demon screamed, freezing in place, and when the mage clenched his fist, the demon writhed and erupted into flame like a ghost and shivered into nothingness.

The gesture was oddly familiar, and the power used with it even more so. He just couldn’t place it. Didn't want to. It dredged up memories, painful memories, memories of Before, memories better left buried.

He raced forward, searching for more of the untainted demons, demons he could kill. But they were intelligent, and having seen the death of their brother, they rushed him, too many for him to handle, and all of them Tainted. He barely managed to dodge their attacks, ending up in the clear space next to the black dragon covered in tiny nicks and scratches, all of them gleaming with white Grace.

The dragon’s green eyes widened, and its teeth closed just over Castiel’s head,  a demon trapped between his teeth, the web of Taint within it flaring with fire. It managed to wriggle free, cleansed, but Castiel caught the tail end of it and smote it. The dragon grinned at him sadly, tail coming up and around in a protective, gentle gesture, before the mage shouted something that sounded like “Diane!” and it - she? Was this dragon female? - whipped around to exhale flame at the demons, forcing them back for a heartbeat.

The head came down to survey the storm around them, just barely held back by the mage’s wardings, and muttered something that sounded like “Screw it.” She reared up, tail curling around and forcing Castiel underneath the protective bulk, wings folding shut. The mage somehow kept his seat throughout this whole maneuver _and_ clipped a few demons with a fireblast.

The dragon roared, the sound echoing with an unearthly resonance, and the demons howled and roared downwards, slamming against the dome the mage had erected, sparks showering down. The roaring resolved itself into words.

Familiar words.

“- _Spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis leg_ -” She - he? The voice certainly sounded male - choked off as a demon erupted from beneath him, slamming into his side and throwing him over. He landed heavily on his side with a whuff, the mage flung free and slamming into the ground hard. He didn’t seem in any state to continue, so Castiel took up the chant, exposed and in the open, but hopefully still protected by the mage’s shield, even if the spark sprays were getting smaller and weaker.

“ _Omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica! Ergo, draco maledicte. Ecclesiam tuam securi-_ ” The shield failed.

Demons swirled around him, Tainted smoke brushing his vessel’s skin, tearing it to shreds, coiling around his throat and stopping the words before they could rise. He brought both hands up to try to smite them, but the Untainted ones were attacking the fallen mage and dragon, and the Taint woven through the ones around him shielded them from his light. They were playing with their prey like cat and mouse, as the saying went. He’d die slowly, without even being able to fight these things.

“ _ECCLESIAM TUAM SECURI TIBI FACIAS LIBERTATE SERVIRE,”_  The roar of sound shocked him, made him cringe and recoil. Despite the fact that he wasn’t a demon, wasn’t anywhere close to a demon, the words still reached inside him, to his Grace and tugged softly at it, wanting to rip him free of his vessel. The demons froze, hovering still around him, twisting coils of black smoke, straining against the power that wanted to force them down, relaxing their grip around Castiel in the process.

He looked up, catching sight of the mage standing on his dragon's shoulder, blazing with fire and light, power weaving up and out of him.

" _TE ROGAMUS, AUDI NOS!"_

Demons were flung around, driven down through the ground, shrieking and screaming and leaving scorch marks in the dirt, until they were left alone, staring at each other across the burned gap. The silence was deafening, echoing around his head and through the planes that the demons had been screaming on. The mage stared at him for a long second before the dragon groaned and shifted and he leapt off its shoulder, disappearing behind the solid black bulk. It all seemed rather. . . anticlimactic, given the danger they'd just been in. And why did that exorcism even work, anyways? Could Tainted demons even go back to Hell? Was there even a Hell left?

\-----

The mage started at him for a long moment before leaping off the shoulder of his dragon, disappearing behind the massive bulk. The wards on the bunker behind him flickered out, doors swinging open to disgorge hunters and dragons and Messengers alike. The Hunters swarmed Castiel, surrounding him with layers of flannel and leather and denim, extolling his bravery, berating his stupidity, congratulating him on his success. It was a barrier between him and the enigma that was the mage and dragon, preventing him from reaching them, speaking to them, finding out who they were.

He hauled himself to his feet, wincing at the pain of lacerated skin, and  shoved his way through the crush, determined to reach them, but the mages blocked his way, dipping their heads respectfully but keeping him from moving forward.

One of them smiled at him condescendingly, wrapping his tail in a loose coil around Castiel’s feet. “ **I apologize for the inconvenience and all that, but the generals are extremely tired. If you wish to speak to them and apologize for your** **_monumental_ ** **stupidity, I am afraid you will have to wait. Now, is there anything else-”**

Castiel shoved his way past him, only to be caught by his magic, wrapping around his chest and hauling him backwards, freezing him in place. Other mages looked up, including the one who’d fought the demons. Shadowbane. They’d pulled him away to the other end of the field, where he was speaking to a knot of mages while his dragon heaved himself to his feet, shaking his head.

Golden eyes met his, and Shadowbane gently pushed away the thunderrider he was speaking to, beginning to stride through the crowd, which parted around him like water. Even his walk was familiar, although the way he held his head high and shoulders wide was not.

The mage holding Castiel yanked on the tether, making him stumble. “ **I’m not going to ask again, step back!”** Shadowbane saw, and looked like he was about to say something, increasing his pace, when the sky shattered.

\-----

A tiny silver-white dragon plunged out of the sky, small enough that he almost didn’t see it until it was right on top of them, a flickering cone of cloud forming around its hindquarters. Strangely, they were completely silent, even more so than most dragons he’d seen fly (which, admittedly, wasn’t very many). Their mouth was open, and it looked like they were screaming something, but nothing could be heard.

Not until they ripped past them with an echoing _crack_ , wings flaring wide and dragging at the air, mist curling off the tips and coiling behind her. Their scream took a moment longer to reach them. Had they been flying at supersonic speeds? He hadn’t been aware that was possible.

“ _High, high away! There’s blood in the water and flame in the sky, and battle on the horizon! High, high, I beg you, fly to fight the darkness!”_

The black dragon lifted his head, roaring up at the silver-white dragon. There was a question to the sound, and probably some deeper meaning, but Castiel couldn’t interpret it. These fighters of the Dragonstorm had a whole other language for battle, a language he didn’t know.

Despite all the pain and death and betrayal, he sometimes missed the days when the Winchesters, (and by extension, him) had been at the center of everything. Now he was just a nobody, a has-been, a remnant of an older fight.

 _“Nightcrawlers on the East coast, nightcrawlers and worms, with flayers on the horizon and choras in the carnage! Oh, high, high!”_ Their voice faded away as they swept up and over on a parabolic loop, turning to circle around above everyone, still shrieking.

The field exploded into activity. Dragons leapt aloft, wings catching at the air, and slid into formation, thunderrider at the head, magebearer in the middle. Messengers thundered upwards, wings catching at the air, feathers whistling in the wind. Castiel felt a pang of envy. He could teleport, yes, but whenever he did, monsters somehow knew both where he was coming from and where he was going. And besides, actually flying looked like a lot more fun.

Shadowbane shot him one last glance before running towards his dragon, swinging up onto his shoulders as the massive being lunged to his feet and into the air. The dragon too glanced back at him before launching, taking a place at the head of the complex three-tiered formation.

Power gleamed, fire and light, and the sky split in half, a massive rift like the ones Jack could open (used to be able to open, important to remember that now) appearing, glittering with all colors like a diamond. The silver-white dragon darted in first, before the rest of the wings slithered in through and were gone.

The rift disappeared, leaving the sky empty like they’d never even been there. Well, except for the destroyed trees and burnt ground and battered buildings from the demon attack.

Castiel stayed staring at the sky long after everyone else had gone inside. He couldn’t shake the sensation that he’d known that mage, and that they’d known him too.


	2. Dragons

Castiel gazed out the window of the helicopter, watching the shadow play over the water just below them. Beside him, a dragon hyperventilated, gasping for air and clutching the armrests so tightly Castiel almost thought he’d break them, fear radiating off him. A mage looked on in sympathy and barely concealed amusement, murmuring to the others about something in dragontongue, the soft, slurred English sounding almost incomprehensible to Castiel. It was supposed to be easier on draconic throats than American or British English, but how they understood words with half the consonants gone or transmuted into something else was beyond him.

Jody turned around to grin at him from her seat forward in the cockpit. He didn’t respond, just stared out the window. When would they get the message that he’d like to be left alone? Six years of this and he was still waiting for them to just leave him be, let him live out the rest of his life in obscurity.

Six years since he’d left the Winchesters behind. Six years since he’d condemned them to die without him.

But. . . these dragons had survived. Had thrived, given the level of magic and technology they’d managed to reach. Perhaps-

No. That was too painful to think about. Too painful to hope.

He returned his gaze to the Atlantic Ocean below.

\-----

The helicopters landed in the middle of a clearing that had apparently been prepared just for them, given the recently cut wood that was in the process of being stored around the edges of the clearing cut in the eastern woods. Dragons, both fully draconic and half-shifted could be seen around the edges and in the trees, setting up what appeared to be temporary shelters and other necessary structures. Although the trees may have hidden some of them, it did not appear that there were many full humans among the group, nor that there were nearly enough tents to house all the shifters he saw.

The rotor blades slowed enough to allow people in close, and dragons were immediately rushing in, swinging the door wide and very nearly forcibly unloading the passengers and cargo. One of them raced forward to speak to the pilot, while others dragged fuel canisters that had been dropped earlier and started refueling the helicopters.

Others raced forward to aid the shaking, terrified dragons coming off the plane, nodding in sympathy, while mages laughed behind their hands and whispered in hissing, growling dragontongue.

Dean had been scared of heights. Had that translated into flying on his own? Was that what had brought him-

No. He would not think about that.

“Why is everyone rushing to get the helicopter unloaded? We didn’t see any danger on the way over, and this place seems to be heavily warded,” he asked a passing mage, who turned to face him, mane of spikes lifting in polite question. He blinked at the question before taking in Castiel’s t-shirt and jeans. His mouth opened in a silent “ah” of realization, and he leaned down to face Castiel, bending his impressive height down to speak to him face to face. The gesture felt oddly condescending.

“While mages can prevent detection by supernatural means, they cannot prevent it by physical means. And choppers _are_ kinda loud.” He gave Castiel a kind smile. “Better safe than sorry, particularly when we don’t have any defenses in place around here. Don’t worry. I’m sure that we’ll be out of here long before anything notices.” He dipped his head politely and left, stopping to snicker about something with a friend. Castiel narrowed his eyes at the mage. While he hadn’t been impolite, there had been something about his manner. . .

Jody shouted his name, waving him over to where the dragons had dumped their stuff. He went to meet her, avoiding the laughing glances mages shot his way.

“So apparently, we can only take about a quarter of this stuff with us. Pick out the stuff you want the most, I guess, and leave the rest for the chopper to take back.”

Castiel looked down at the ‘stuff’ she was talking about. He barely had a single bag, holding an assortment of things he’d thought he might need. Everything he really wanted to keep was in his pockets, or stored in his Grace.

“I don’t need any of mine. You can leave it.” He was an angel after all, and theoretically should have been able to survive without so much as clothes in the Arctic. Tainted wasteland, on the other hand. . . Well, the dragons would take care of that.

“You sure?”

“Yes.” He left, walking over to a dragon who looked like they were organizing things, directing others with tersely worded commands. Or at least, as terse as dragontongue could get.

“Is there anything you want me to do?” The dragon looked at him weirdly for a second, before blinking and gesturing to shifters setting up tents.

“Help set up, I guess.” Castiel had turned away, when the dragon snorted. “You know, I never expected any of you to offer to help set up. “

“Why?”

“Oh, you know, entitled, used to having people or machines or computers do things for you. Trust me, your life may be easier than a shifters, but it’s going to be nowhere near as cushy as you’re used to.” He grinned at Castiel, showing off the prominent doubled canines.

“My life has not been ‘cushy’, as you put it.”

“Still, whatever it was like, it was easier than this. Life here ain’t no picnic.”

“It is a picnic? Because you used a double negative-”

“Dude, who are you, Rain Man?”

“No, I’m Castiel.” He tipped his head to the side, trying to get a different perspective on the world that might help make sense of all this.

The dragon sighed. “Just go help with the tents,” he said, shaking his head and flicking his tail in the general direction of the working shifters. Castiel stared at him for a moment longer before turning and leaving.

\-----

He got a lot of weird looks throughout the day. Living with the Men of Letters for the past six years, he’d just sort of been. . . ignored. Left alone. He liked it that way, instead of all the furtive glances, the whispers, the curiosity. He just wanted to be left alone. He deserved to be left alone.

They wouldn’t let him. There was always someone by his side, showing him around the camp (which had been set up only to be torn down the next morning, they’d told him), asking him if he understood this or knew how to do that. Watching him. Making sure that he didn’t do anything that might endanger lives, get someone killed because a tent couldn’t be packed quickly enough or because the food hadn’t been cleansed properly. He probably would’ve exploded at them if it wasn’t for that saving grace. His old angelic patience was long gone.

The night was long and rather chilly, sitting at the ashes of the cold campfire, staring up at the stars. They were much more prominent than they’d ever been since humanity had discovered electric lighting. There were no lights to make the night sky orange now, no blocking clouds of haze in the air, just the sharp crispness of a northern fall and the faint tang of Taint that crept into everything here.

\-----

They moved out in the morning, rolling up tents and packing cooking utensils and clipping saddlebags onto harnesses. Except for the clearing, it looked like there’d never been anyone there at all.

Castiel had been assigned to ride with a dragon named Keith and a mage named Anita, clinging to her waist as they soared through the air, watching the trees roll by underneath.  A dragon raced past them, laughing softly at something he hadn’t heard, easily outstripping the entire formation before curling around to race back, violet and black wings beating with a sound like thunder. He caught a glimpse of metal on their face before they were past and gone.

“Who was that?”

“Rica. Messenger. Loves showing off. Ignore her. She can outfly anything, so she thinks she can _do_ anything.” Anita huffed, smoothing one hand back over her hair and adjusting the straps of the harness on Keith’s back.

“Eiluna’s the one who can outfly anything. Rica just thinks she can.” Keith interjected with a rumble, shaking his neck and making Castiel grab for the spine in front of him. “So why are you here, anyways?”

“We were sent over by the British Men of Letters to help foster relations between the Dragonstorm and the rest of the world.”

“Wonderful. So we’re going to have to babysit you, is that it? Play nanny when there are things that actually need doing?” Anita scoffed. Castiel blinked.

“We _are_ Hunters. We know how to handle ourselves.”

Keith huffed but didn’t speak. Anita focused her attention on her comm. Castiel watched the trees wave in the wind of their passing.

\-----

The camp was in the hills, hidden among the trees in a rocky outcropping. Glimmers of magic ringed it, sparking on the ground and in the trees, flaring when the shifters crossed the barrier. The camp itself was practically nonexistent, nothing more than a couple low tents and dried grass piled around the edges. All the supplies appeared to be stored in harness, ready to be moved at a moment’s notice.

He barely got a glimpse of it before they set down in the trees, creeping towards the perimeter, marked by a faint reddish-purple line on the ground, barely visible even to his senses, but once they crossed it, the mental signatures of the shifters exploded into his mind like fireworks, leaving him wondering how he could possible have missed it.

Anita glanced back at him with a  “Psychic, huh?” and the cold hostility in her words was faded from its initial freezing tone. He shook his head.

“Not in the sense you seem to be thinking of.” She shrugged and turned around, leaning down to grab at the handgrips on Keith’s saddle, sagging into the support his upright neck gave.

The camp itself was even less impressive than it had been from the air, looking more like a temporary picnic spot than a draconic stronghold. But then again, the fighters here were more like . . . what was the word? Guerillas, yes, guerilla fighters than an army in the modern sense.

Anita shoved at him, and he swung off Keith’s back, politely thanking the dragon. He ignored Castiel, of course. Jody was already dismounted, waving him over to where a dragon dressed not in the leather or cloth wraps favored by most but in full leather armor sewn with shed scales stood glaring at her. Upon Castiel’s arrival, he shifted his glare to the angel, a heavy glower made all the more oppressive by his black eyes. He started speaking even before Castiel stopped moving, a deep rumble almost reminiscent of his own voice.

And Dean’s.

It hurt, that voice.

“I’ll be blunt. You were sent over by the Rest of the World,” and Castiel could practically hear the capitals, “as potential allies and candidates for turning. The generals accepted this proposal with minimal consultation from the rest of us, which, frankly, I think was bullshit.” He snarled, baring long doubled canines. “They might think that you can survive. We think you can’t. To be honest, I think we’re going to be lucky if we have a bone” he emphasized the singular “to ship back to your family.”

“Don’t have family. ‘S why we were chosen. And ‘sides, we’re trained military. We can handle ourselves.” Max, one of the more egotistical of the group, puffed out his chest and tried to stare down the dragon. It didn’t work.

“The American military was the best in the world. As of right now, I can think of four living veterans. In the entire Dragonstorm. And this place has only gotten worse since their fights.You won’t survive.”

The dragon sighed and flicked his tail, calling a group of three others over, all of them dressed in the same leather armor. “I will assign you each a guard. You will perform the same duties as any other human member of the camps, to the best of your ability. You will not leave the camps, and you will be at the mercy of the movement of the camps as for where you go. You _will_ shift between camps, to meet as many commanders as possible, but the only thing we can guarantee is that you’ll be at the landing site six months from now. If you even live that long.”

He turned and left, tail twitching and brushing the stamped-down grass. One of the dragons waiting politely just behind them stepped forward. “We’re here to show you to your tents. Until you are assigned to the in-camp work roster, you will not leave them except in the company of another dragon, and then only for emergencies.” He flashed a smile before turning and walking across the camp to a group of three low tents.

The interiors were dim and dusty, sunken into the ground with four small piles of leather and grass in shallow scoops in the floor. The ceiling was low enough that it forced him to stoop, and he wasn’t the tallest of the group by a long shot. Despite the cloud cover, they were already sweltering, dense and stuffy and overheated enough for Castiel to notice even through the dimmed senses of an angel in a vessel. For the humans here, it must be overwhelming. How did the shifters stand this kind of thing?

They didn’t, that was how. They slept out in the open. These tents were put up solely for them. He settled onto one of the piles, staring at the loose dirt of the floor, wondering if the Bunker was still in use, and if it was, could he go back there?

He stopped that train of thought before it started to hurt too much.

\-----

They were let out the next morning just before dawn, at the point in time where it was still dim enough that only Castiel could see well but it was technically still morning. Dragons stirred as they passed, eyes occasionally blinking open to watch them go.

Humans met them at the edge of the camp, chatting softly in a variant of dragontongue. They didn’t even respond until the group was nearly on top of them, and even then, only one of them even looked up.

“Yo! 'Sup?”

“ _Ambassadors_ from the _Rest of the World_. You know, the ones you’re supposed to be assigning to a work detail?”

“Yup. So!” He turned to face them, grinning. “Who knows how to cook?”

\-----

Castiel stared down at the harness he was holding. Meters and meters of leather straps with strange metal buckles and fittings and pads, with hooks and spikes and clips all over it. He couldn’t even make out which part was the front.

Eli looked over at him. “Don’ worry about what goes where. All you need to do is go over it, check for rips or nicks or wear or brittleness, rust or grit in the metal, and basic’lly any other wear and tear. Tie one of these ‘round the spot,” he brandished a plastic bowl full of red and green twist ties, ”and let ‘s know when you’re done.” The human grinned and settled into his camp chair, pulling another, smaller harness into his lap. “‘S an important job, so be careful. Strap breaks at the wrong moment, might lose a weeks worth of supplies, or armor in a vital spot, or a bunch ‘a mage tech, or something else just ‘s nasty.”

“Then shouldn’t I mend whatever flaws I find?”

“Nah. Let ‘s do that stuff. You just mark the flaws, we’ll fix ‘em. Well? Whatcha waitin’ for?” Castiel jolted and bent his head to the harness, bending the straps gently between his hands, inspecting the fittings for any sign of rust or tarnish. The entire rig was in surprisingly good shape, despite the heavy wear and tear on it. From battle, most likely.

Brandon looked over his own harness. “Isn’t this demeaning? Being harnessed like animals? Forced to carry the mages and the humans? If I was a dragon, I wouldn’t let them do that to me.”

“Nah, not really. ‘Slike wearing a backpack. Holds all your stuff while freeing up your hands. ‘N they choose to carry the mages. We woudn’ survive without ‘em, you know. The dragons make the decisions. They don’ wannoo, we don’ ask.” He grinned again, and gestured at Brandon. “Get goin’! We ain’t got all day!”

“We don’t?”

“Naah! You’re on fetch’n’carry after lunch. ‘N these need t’ get done, so. . .” Brandon blinked, before crouching over the tangled mass in his lap. Eli grinned at him again, and yanked a stream of thread from the spool at his side with a flourishing sweep.

\-----

Fetch and carry was, apparently, running to the stores and digging through them to get the crafter mage on duty anything he needed. The bags were marked, but supplies were spread out through his entire wing, and often buried underneath other things. And he had to be careful not to mess up the organization of the bags or move them too much or forget to close them or close them too tightly.

He had been an angel of the Lord, once, a warrior, esteemed of Heaven, in command of his own garrison of angels. A soldier of God, with a great destiny and a script to follow. Well loved among the others of his kind, stationed on Earth when so many were confined to Heaven.  And even when he had fallen, when he had been cast out, he had been at the center of things right alongside the Winchesters. He had been a player in the great game of the fate of the world. He had stood face to face with God and his sister, defied the Devil and Molotov’ed the Archangel Michael. He had come back from the _Empty_!

A bare ten years ago, he had never even dreamed that he might be at the beck and call of a twenty-seven year old boy for whatever whims he might have. Up to and including: “get me a cup of tea”, “open the flaps, it’s too hot in here”, “run tell Emma I was right”, and “can you shut the tent flaps? The wind’s getting in”.

Finally, _finally_ , the cry for dinner was sounded and dragons flocked towards the firepit at the center of the camp. He went with them, despite not needing to eat, in the hope of seeing Jody again before they were both sent back to their separate tents for another long, boiling night.

Jody was standing next to the fire, dishing out small bowls of what looked like rice. He moved to walk towards her, and received several dozen dirty looks simultaneously from all the humans waiting in line. He stared at them in confusion before Jody sighed explosively and stormed forward to drag him by the arm up to the cookpot, shoving a ladle into his hands.

“Here. Help serve.” He blinked at it before she pushed him in front of another pot filled with brownish liquid. “Scoop sauce over the rice when they come to you, and _don’t_ ask me any questions. I’ve had a long enough day already. . .” He obediently ladled some of the stuff over the first bowl that someone stuck underneath his nose.

It was mindless work, without the diversion of Eli’s constant chattering or the exasperation of being told to fetch like a dog, and it left him time to think. Think about everything that he’d lost. Everything he’d forfeited.

He didn’t want to think about that. It just reminded him of his failures, of his mistakes. Of the lives he’d taken, even indirectly.

Someone roared from beyond the tree line, the sound booming up and out and over the hills, echoed by others in a ring around them. Dragons snapped upright, twisting into full-shifted form, thundering aloft. Humans raced around, gathering discarded bowls and shaking them out, scooping up utensils and tearing down tents, dragging saddlebags into place and hooking  them onto dragonback. Mages and mage-carriers were already aloft, scoping out the terrain before swooping down with the report that had even more people scrambling to clean up and pack up and get out of here.

Jody was already scooping food into containers, which disappeared as soon as they were filled, packed into the bellynetting of waiting dragons, who leapt aloft as soon as they were fully rigged out. Rica and a reddish-brown dragon leapt aloft as well, cracking across the sky and beyond the mountains on the horizon.

Eli came racing up, to catch at his arm. “Y’needa gid alof righ’now! C’rirs’ll teg y’ou, bring y’ t’ th’ nex’ cam.”

“What?” Jody blinked at him, her serving spoon held at a dangerous angle.

“GO!” He shoved them both towards a pair of courier dragons staring at the sky warily, pacing in small circles and twitching. They both crouched as soon as they saw the humans racing towards them, revealing pads and straps just in front of their shoulders. Jody was up before Castiel, dragging him up behind herself and fastening the straps with fumbling fingers. They were aloft before Castiel had even finished, racing through the sky to slot in at the back of a wing carrying other humans and mages, bolting away from the camp as fast as possible.

He glanced over his shoulder and recoiled. _Something_ was rolling towards the camp, a massive ball of spikes and tentacles and who knew what else, clawing at the sky and crushing the trees in its path. The tiny figures of dragons darted among the waving arms, always just out of reach but doing no damage. Despite its massive size, there was no sound except for the crack of falling trees and the distant thunder of dragon wings.

Tentacles erupted just underneath them, and the courier wing snapped into a vertical climb, a wing of fighters slotting in underneath to spray acid on the creature squirming up from underground. Mages cast spells, light flickering around them and shimmering over the monster, moving like a multicolored second skin.

It kept coming.

Dragons raced across the sky, gaining altitude with every wingbeat, desperate to get away. Even the flyers distracting the first one turned and fled, skimming across the sky high above everyone else, shrieking warnings to the laden flyers.

No wonder the commanders thought they wouldn’t survive. If it hadn’t been for the warning systems, those things would’ve killed them all.

It was a miracle anyone had survived the Year After at all.

The monsters collided, tentacles twining and clashing before they seemed to realize they were on the same size and separated, rolling back underneath the earth, leaving no trace as to their path.

“What the hell were those things?” Jody gasped, clutching the harness straps.

“Squirm. Slow, easy to escape, but darn hard to kill. We don’t have the firepower to take one out right now,” the courier they were on grunted, moving a little faster to keep up with the rest of the wing.

“Why not? I thought all camps were fighter camps?”

“All dragons fight, but we’re a crafter camp. Keep the mages safe, make sure they have what they need to make what they do. Sure, we can handle the little ones, but something like that? Hell no. We’ll head out of here, report this to the big guns, and find another safe spot. Maybe even split up and head out to the Cascades or some such.”

The reddish-brown dragon that had been speaking with Rica came racing over, dropping into place just above their courier.

“The commander wants to talk to all of the _ambassadors_ right away.”

“Come on, really? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Yeah, really, and _I_ am a _Messenger_. I would never kid.”

“Yeah, you’re a Messenger and I’m a thunderrider in Firebringer’s wing. Tell ’em I’ll be there.” The reddish dragon dipped their head (how was that even possible while flying? Wouldn’t that throw you off badly?) and soared off to swing wide circles around the group. The courier groaned and beat a little faster, surging ahead of the rest to slide into position next to a black and red dragon at the front, who looked at them out of the corner of one eye.

“See why we think you’ll end up dead? It takes a certain kind of person to live here. As much as I respect the Hunter profession, there’s a reason there’re only around three ‘r four left. You have to be willing to run away.” He sighed. “We’ll do our best to keep you alive, but no promises. And no blabbing about our skills to those nancies back in England. We’ll stay and fight, not be dragged off to be experimented on and fiddled around with!”

“They don’t-” Jody started, but was cut off as the courier left the commander’s side via a sideways slide down and around and back up again, leaving her gasping and dragging at the harness straps. The courier didn’t even appear to notice.

They were just about to loop back into the safety of the group when something hooked into place around the courier’s wings and dragged them down. Castiel caught a glimpse of blackish-green vines wrapping around wings before the sky and the ground switched places.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, I hope this isn't too out there and AU.  
> As always, comments are greatly appreciated.


	3. Angels

The world was, abruptly, the forest floor, covered with writhing blackish-green vines that strained towards the sky. Several plummeted flaming, but more erupted from the ground, reaching up to try to entangle dragons and knock them from the sky.

His courier and Jody had been flung, stunned, to the side and he rushed over to them, unsure of his steps on the heaving dirt that periodically sprouted roots that tried to wrap around his ankles but shied away from the touch of his skin. He didn’t know why.

Jody was hurt bad, blood and what appeared to be brain fluid leaking from a skull split wide on a rock, but her soul was still secure in her body, clinging to the slowing beat of her heart. The courier was bruised and battered, with broken wings and shattered scales, but would live a while longer.  He healed Jody with a touch, Grace flowing through the palm of his hand and into her skull. The vines shied away from the light, making an odd, high-pitched shrieking noise, while their green-black bark lightened to an ashy color.

He hadn’t known plants could scream.

But. . . He wasn’t a mage. He hadn’t drunk dragonsblood and turned like the Messengers. His power should have had no effect on these things, whatever they were. And yet he strode through the thrashing tendrils, and none of them touched him, or even so much as came close to him. But when he tried to heal the courier, they seemed to get over their apprehension and come racing in, wicked thorns glistening with an acrid-smelling liquid. He barely managed to avoid them, throwing himself into a slide on the ground as they tore into the courier, spreading inky blackness like paint over his scales, his original green and yellow coloring, disappearing, body warping into something _else_.

When the courier stood he was no longer a dragon, but a bright bile-colored  worm, with too many insectile legs and blind eyes roving, searching for Castiel. He froze, blade sliding from his Grace and into his palm, stepping back to protect Jody. The vines had already begun to cover her, but they shied away at his touch, writhing in a perimeter around him. Already they had begun to cover the ground, so that the only bare dirt to be found was in a circle where he stood.

The courier - no, that wasn’t the courier anymore - the _thing_ advanced, head swinging, large nostrils flaring. Vines wriggled along its back, gleaming black-green and red as they wound their way around the things body, flooding up and down its legs with every step, caressing along the dragging tail. It snapped at Castiel, and he was barely able to avoid it, bringing his blade up too late to get in a return strike before it retreated, rearing up into the air like one of the vines that had birthed it.

It didn’t attack again, just as wary of Castiel as the vines. Instead, it screamed up at the sky, and the tendrils resumed their aerial attack, coiling around dragons and trying to bring them down, but the mages in the sky burned the vines as they got too close, leaving the majority of their force to flee.

Castiel looked at his palm. These things might be Tainted, might only be able to be killed by the touch of a dragon or mage, but they seemed to despise the touch of his Grace. Perhaps he could slow them down, give the others above enough room and time to rescue them and still get away?

He brought up power from his core, the white light and fire and energy that made an angel an _angel_ , more than human, more than demon, more than just a consciousness in a body. It sang through him, forcing him to spread his wings as he reached out to smite one of the vines. At the touch of his light, the vine _screamed,_ making Jody flinch and the worm-thing whip towards him. He dodged and pressed his palm flat against the vine, controlling his revulsion at the slimy _squish_ of the surface and pouring all the power he’d gathered into the column of Tainted plant.

The pillar howled and thrashed, moving so erratically that dragons couldn’t dodge and were knocked from the sky. Some of them recovered in time, but others were caught by more vines, unaffected vines, and dragged screaming out of the sky.

He caught a glimpse of one mage-dragon pair, wrapped in vines so tightly that they couldn’t even scream, just groan in pain as thorns hooked into their flesh. The vines brought them down, low to the ground, where a great flowerlike thing made of translucent petals erupted out of the ground and clamped down on them. The petals were like glass, giving him an excellent view as some sort of acid rained down on the struggling pair, melting away scales as they screamed and clawed at the sides futilely before dissolving the skin and flesh and finally stripping them to the bones, which bubbled in the solution as the flower-thing sank back below the ground.

Another dragon hit with a sickening crunch, and the thing that had been the courier leaped on it, ripping into the exposed belly without pause and tearing out the internal organs, veins and intestines trailing back into the twitching, still-living body. The thing had lost all care for the carnage going on around it, focused solely on its meal.

Castiel had seen a great deal of gore in his time, but the sheer amount of carnage here, the death of innocent beings, made him sick. Where had his old detachment gone?

A dragon landed, carrying the dead body of the mage he’d been on fetch and carry duty for earlier in the day, dropping it at his feet. The twenty-year-old’s dead violet eyes stared up at him coldly, while the dragon glared through streaming tears.

“What have you done?” There wasn’t even any anger to the words, just confusion, question, shock. Grief.

“I - I don’t know. . .” He glanced around, at the remains of the fallen dragons, at the vines, at the twisted courier whose eyes still looked like those of a dragon, at the dead mage.

“I’ve killed them.”

And he had. He had. They would’ve survived if he’d just had the sense to let it be, to get to the courier faster. They could’ve walked away from the vines, gone to a spot where the rest of the group could’ve picked them up. Nobody would’ve had to die.

But he was too slow. He got the courier killed (he hadn’t even known his name!), he tried to smite the vines and got two mages and a dozen other dragons killed horribly and it was _all his fault_.

Just like the Winchester’s deaths had been.

Just like the fall of the angels had been.

Just like. . . well, everything, really.

“I’ve killed them all.”

He couldn’t stop the surge of power that came with the words, not that he wanted to. It roared through his limbs and out his unfurled wings, stretching through his feet and his fingers and his feathers, curling into the vines themselves and burning, burning, _burning._

The vines screamed, and he screamed with them, a howling torrent in his true voice that had Jody and the dragon crouching to cover their ears, that had the few living dragons on the ground writhing in pain.

The black-green of the vines paled into green-grey ash and crumbled, the courier-monster shrieked and fled, the ground heaved as great transparent flowers surged upwards and towards him like alien mouths only to burn to nothing in the light of his Grace. Mages plunged from the sky and he screamed at them to get away but they refused to listen, wandering among the writhing, dying tendrils, sending calculated amounts of energy to burn out the Taint and let Castiel finish killing this plant-monster.

He dropped to the ground, staring around at the circle of ash he’d left behind, listening to the whispers of the dragons in a language he couldn’t understand, drained of power, of energy, of will to keep going.

The blood of the dead was on his hands.

\-----

Jody stepped forward, placing one hand on his shoulder. "Cas, are you-”

“Don’t call me that.” The had been the nickname the Winchesters had given him, the nickname that meant that he could be more than what he was, that he could be human, and good, a savior of the world instead of one trying to bring about his destruction.

He was no longer that person. He doubted he ever had been, no matter what delusions he might have convinced himself of.

The commander of the camp stepped forward, black eyes snapping. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I don’t know where you got that kind of power, but we were not informed that there would be a _witch_ among the ambassadors, much less one with the kind of power to take down a full grown Audrey!”

“A what? Like from _Little Shop of Horrors_?” Jody asked, but her voice was faded into the background.

“I’m an angel.” Castiel cut in, the words bitter and dull. It didn’t even mean anything anymore. Dragons turned to stare at him, chatter rising in the background but falling to nothing when the commander flicked his tail.

“A _what_?”

“A fallen angel. A screwup of an angel, an angel who couldn't even watch over the people he was supposed to watch over.” Jody turned to stare at him, blinking and beginning to say something, but he ran right over her.

“I fell from Heaven for two humans, two humans I swore I would protect and yet I left them to die in the Storm,” and he couldn’t stop the words now, a litany of all his sins, a confession to an absent Father, “I refused to listen to them and released the Leviathans upon this world, I slaughtered hundreds of my brothers and drove my kind to extinction, I caused the fall of the angels and the destruction of Heaven, I released the Devil from his cage that he might wreak destruction upon this world once more, I pulled Sam out of the Cage without a soul, and I broke his wall and drove him mad. . . I killed a dozen dragons right here, right now. All while I was attempting to help.

“Everything I touch goes wrong. Everyone who has come in contact with me has died, or worse. I bring nothing but destruction with me, wherever I go.” He tuned to face Jody, staring at him with a unreadable expression on her face. He wondered if it meant she hated him. Probably.

“I’m sorry for. . . everything.”

He turned and left, feeling the silent, damning stares of the dragons boring into his back. He ignored them, until Jody raced forward and place her hand on his shoulder.

“Cas, come on, none of that matters any-”

“My _name_ is _Castiel_. You’ll just die if I stay here. You nearly did. It’s better if I just. . . go.” He turned and left, gradually picking up speed until he was running through the forest, missing the swing of his old coat, missing. . . everything, really.

No one came after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So everyone else, including Jody, is basically going "what the hell is going on?"


	4. Snakes

He stopped when the shadow of the mountains passed over his head, leaving him in shadow but the peaks still bathed in pale light. There was no sign of life anywhere around him, just the trees and the faint breeze and the ribbon-thin clouds streaming past overhead.

He stared up at them, searching for some form of life, but there weren’t even any birds. Just. . . nothingness, and the weary bones of the mountains. These mountains were _old_ , old enough that streams had carved out canyons in the rocks, old enough that time had worn them down until snow no longer fell on the peaks, old enough to remember a time before the Fall of angels, if stone could remember. He rather thought it could, given the sadness this place seemed to exude.

Something whipped by overhead, drawing his head up to stare as a tiny blue dragon, glittering in the late-afternoon light, raced by above him, wings straining to catch the air and slow them from their breakneck pace.

Literally breakneck; their lower half was encased in a cone of cloud, and the hissing rush of their passage didn’t hit him until they were well past. At supersonic speeds, he wondered how their body even managed to handle such extreme acceleration and wind resistance.

They definitely didn’t look like the other dragons he’d seen, considerably smaller in size than even Rica, but with wings that dwarfed their body like a butterfly’s. They kept circling over his head, dropping speed with every turn, until they flopped to the ground with a disproportionate _thud_.

They stared at each other, blue eyes meeting dark muddy green, until the little dragon blinked and stood up, blurring and resolving into a tiny girl with braided brown-blonde hair and wings that nearly dragged on the ground.

“What the hell’re _you_ doing out here? And how are you not dead?”

“I killed the thing that was trying to kill me. Were you sent to retreive me?”

She goggled for a moment, before collecting herself back into a stiffly formal position. “No. Whatever camp you were in, if they didn’t have warriors to send after you, they wouldn’t have the authority to send _me_. Unless you’re from Kerry’s thunder, in which case, _how_?”

“How what?”

“How did you survive, duh. They’re all the way over in the Olympics, and you would’ve had to cross the Midwest. Unlesssss. . . dah, never mind, tangent-y stuff. What are you doing out here? And tell the truth. I won’t get you in trouble. ‘Could probably help you, if you deserve it.”

“I got dragons killed, so I left. They wouldn’t want me, not after what I did.”

She stepped back, wings unfolding behind her, suddenly on the defensive. “And why’d you get those dragons killed?”

“I tried to kill the vines, but they went crazy and knocked them out of the sky. I couldn’t stop it.“

The dragon relaxed, wings settling into their previous half-folded position. “Ah. Vines? Like an Audrey?”

“That is what the commander called it, yes.”

“Aaaaah.” She glanced around, then stepped closer. “Look, you don’t seem like a particularly evil guy, and none of my alarms are going off, so, ehn, you’re probably worth saving. I’ll give you this.” She pried a glittering piece of decorative scrollwork of the edge of her bracers. “‘Sa wardstone. I’ll protect you for, oh, twenty-four hours, give or take?” Abruptly, she stepped back, wings folding in close around her.  “Well. I’d best be going, then. I’ve got things to do, messages to deliver, people to see and events to report. I’ll, uh, send someone back to you when I get where I’m going. Should be here in plenty of time to rescue you, unless I’m wrong about the charge on that thing.”

She stepped away, out into the middle of the open ground. “I’d say see you, wait. Did you say an Audrey?”

“Yes?”

“Yes, you did fight an Audrey and affected it, or are you asking me what the question was?”

“I saw an Audrey.”

“And you hurt it.”

“Yes. Is that important?”

“It’s impossible, is what it is. Only angels can so much as make an Audrey squirm, much less _hurt_ one. And there aren’t any angels that I haven’t at least _seen_ , if not spoken to. And I’ve never so much as seen you before. So you can’t be an angel. Nephilim?”

Castiel blinked. “No, I’m not a nephilim. I’m an angel.”

“No, you’re not. I’ve told you, I can recognize all angels on sight, and you’re not one of them. And you’re definitely not a mage, so,” she yanked a blade from a sheath hidden in the folds of her skirt and pointed it at him, “what the hell are you and what are you doing here? Also, what was your name again?”

The blade was made of silvery metal, but not Celestial metal, just polished steel with the strange oil-slick overlay of mage work, and a darker pattern like lightning on the blade. It couldn’t harm him.

He stepped forward, until the point almost touched his chest. The dagger trembled; this girl wasn’t a fighter, much less someone who could stab a person in cold blood. “I never told you my name.”

“Then what is your name?”

What harm could his name do? She was no witch, to conjure with it, and he was probably going to die here anyways. The wardstone she’d given him had just delayed the inevitable. “Castiel.”

“You’re dead,” she fired back, without even stopping to think about it.

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are! Don’t try to put one over on me, I’ve heard the stories. Castiel, the fallen angel, who left his brothers for love of the mud monkeys. Castiel, killer of Raphael, who tore heaven apart. Castiel, the poor misguided soul who cast the angels down. Castiel, who forsook his family, his home, and his kind for humans who _never even cared about him_ . They all talk, and talk, and talk and everyone has something to say, but they all agree that _you’re dead_.”

He blinked and stared at her. Who was this girl, to lay such accusations on him, to repeat his faults to his face, to claim that the one bright spot left in his life was nothing but false hope?

“You’re wrong. They cared about me. I know they did. They wouldn’t. . . they wouldn’t have left me like I left them. They made mistakes, yes, but they always fixed them. Not like I did.”

She shrugged, nonchalant, and how could she be so careless? How could she speak so easily of his old shames, as if they were nothing?

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t particularly care, except for the fact that they all say you’re _dead_. But you did kill an Audrey. . . Wait here. I’ll send someone back for you from the camp, see if you are who you say you are.”

She flicked him a cheerful grin at odds with what she just said, unfolded her wings, and lunged aloft with a truly impressive leap, even for a dragon. Her wings thundered as she strained to move their unwieldy length around, and she was off, soon nothing more than a faint glitter on the horizon before the shadow of the setting sun dimmed her scales to nothing.

He was alone again, sitting in the middle of nowhere wondering if the dragon was nothing more than a hallucination. Perhaps he’d gone crazy again. There had been peace in insanity, peace and calmness and a cool detachment from all the problems of the world.

He wouldn’t mind going crazy again. It would be better than the constant gnawing shame.

\-----

The sun had slipped around the other side of the world, and he was thinking about the people he left behind. Jody would survive, her and all the rest, and she’d go home in six months and reunite with Donna and the rest of the girls and they’d go back to fighting the monsters in the Rest of the World (and how silly it had been to think that they could’ve asked for help from the dragons here. If anything, the Brits should be offering their help to the Americans), and he won’t be missed. He will cause no more pain to anyone in death, in the easy sleep of the Empty, guarded by an entity older than God.

Even now, Claire and all the others across the ocean are rising to look at the sky and prepare for the day’s battle. He hadn’t quite noticed the time passing, until all of a sudden he knew that dawn was not far off, though the sky was dark as ever. Thirteen hours, and the dragon still hadn’t returned. Eleven hours left before the wardstone ran out. Maybe more.

The sun rose, the trees seeming oddly desaturated in the pale early-morning light. There was no chorus of songbirds to greet the dawn, just the eerie silence. He stood in the center of the open ground, staring up as mare’s tail clouds drifted slowly across the sky.

The ground shook.

Earthquake? No, he would know. He would feel the earth slip underneath him, feel the stone grinding as tension abruptly released.This was not an earthquake. This was something else.

The world fell even quieter, if that was possible, except for the pounding rumble. It sounded like. . . hoofbeats?

Something plunged out of the trees, hooves slamming into the ground just in front of him before it was aloft again, tawny red-gold wings unfolding and beating, back talons just about scraping his head. He ducked, only to throw himself into the path of another one of the things, storming across the ground, tearing up bits of dirt and grass. He nearly got impaled by the lowered antlers as the thing charged, before it swung to the side and around him.

Castiel was surrounded by a river of brown and reddish bodies, rust-red antlers and powerful wings. Several of the things thundered aloft if they had the space, circling low over the herd and screaming at the others. He was buffeted from side to side, struggling to regain his feet after each blow, dodging razor-edged antlers that smelled poisoned, but he was never _attacked_.

Something was driving these creatures on. Something that scared them enough that all they wanted to do was get away.

What could scare a herd of winged deer with poisoned antlers several hundred strong?

\-----

The last panicked stragglers raced past, gulping for air and slipping on the churned mud. One fell with a scream, straining to get up, but one leg was broken, unmoving in the slipping mud. He stepped closer and it screamed at him, baring fangs that no deer should have. None of its kind came back for it, the thunder of their passage already fading into the distance. It howled, enough noise to more than make up for the previous silence, before snapping silent, eyes rolling whitely.

Castiel stood up, pulling out his angel blade and turning, looking at the meadow and the forest and the mountains in turn, trying to find the source of the creeping danger her was feeling.

There was nothing. No movement, no sound, nothing. He turned to look back at the deer, and startled back, bringing his blade up in defense.

A slender snake had crept out of the trees and was busy dragging the winged deer away. The creature was still silent, frozen in terror, back talons twitching and clawing at the ground.

The snake lifted its head to look at him, cloudy-blue eyes wide and staring. It hissed, weaving, revealing long sets of fangs that dripped with amber liquid. Castiel retreated, only to hear another hiss behind him. He spun to find a second head, identical to the first down to the diamond-shaped markings along the head.

This one was laughing.

Green gas streamed from its nostrils, poisoning the air around it, and although he didn’t need to breathe, Castiel could feel it on his skin, a brush of smoke that burned before going numb. The deer screamed, thrashing, before falling still and silent and he could feel the life had left it. The first head dragged it away, laughing, while another and another and another crept out of the trees, some the size of garden snakes, some the size of cars.

All of them were laughing.

“What are you?” He ground the words out, wasting some of his air. The gas was Tainted, badly. The less he breathed, the longer he had. Maybe the dragon was coming back soon.

And maybe not. Maybe he would just die here.

He was surprisingly okay with that possibility.

“We,” hissed one head, “are thhhhe Wyrm king.”

“And youuuuu,” hissed another, “are our prey.”

They all laughed, heads whipping back and forth, spewing greenish gas. One head struck, and Castiel whipped to the side, slamming down with his angel blade through the thing’s eye. It recoiled, tearing the weapon from his hand, one blue eye slowly turning ruby red.

“Ohhhh, now you’fffffe made usss _mad_ ,” they - it? - hissed, and began to weave towards him, a hypnotic motion. He spun, trying to see which head would reach him first, but they were all the same and he couldn’t see which one it was. They snapped and drooled, tongues flickering in and out. A drop of amber liquid landed on his shoulder and burned its way through his coat, seeping in through the skin and creeping towards his heard. He could feel the Taint of it.

Green-amber-black scales blurred past his vision, one blue-grey eye filling his line of sight. “Hhhe isss not shhhhhhifter or hhhuman. Hhhe will be ssstrong, sssstrong enouffff to ffffight.”

“Thhhhhen let hhhim ffffight. We will win. We alwayssss win. Hhhhe will be one offff usss, jussst like all thhhhe othhhhers.”

“Yessss, turn hhhim! Hhhe is ssstrong. Thhhhey will not kill hhhim eassssy.”

“Peacccccce! Thhhhe Taint hhhassss touchhhhhed him, now and beffffffore. Hhhe will turn in time.” The snakes were laughing again, Castiel noted. The poison was making him fuzzy-headed.

He brought his Grace up from his core, forcing the toxin out of his system, walling off the Taint in his shoulder. It wormed its way into his Grace, but he ignored it, watching the dancing snakeheads. He could still see the hilt of his blade, standing in the center of one of the snake’s eyes. It was a reference point, a way to tell which snake was which, but it only worked for the one of them, and they were all alike.

A snakehead darted within reach, and he slammed his palm down flat on its nose, pouring Grace into the scales as the thing recoiled, shrieking. Its face was burned black and grey, crumbling into ash at the edges, and the eyes were blind and trailing smoke. It still moved, though, snapping at the air until another pair of heads stilled it.

Of course that hadn’t killed it. Wonderful.

“Youuuuu hhhurt ussss! _Usssss_!” One head plunged towards him, and he didn’t get out of the way in time, one long fang plunging into his arm and coming out the other side. His arm went dead, the Grace running through the veins winking out. Castiel tore himself free as the Wyrm King hissed, jaws snapping, lunging in to attack, before the largest head screeched.

“Enouffffff! Leavfff hhhim be! Hhhe will turn ssssoon, and hhhhe will hhhurt ussss no longer. Thhhere are othher problems-” Heads snapped up, curling around to stare over the trees. The faint thunder of leathery dragon wings rolled over the horizon, and the howling scream of enraged dragons.

The snakehead with his blade was lower to the ground than it had been, making room for the heads with working eyes to watch for danger. He ran for it, darting up the long neck and onto the back of the head, yanking the blade out and stabbing the thing right where its brain should’ve been, pouring the last little bit of his Grace that wasn’t concerned with keeping him alive and himself into the strike. The snake writhed and flopped to the ground, throwing him off and well away from the majority of the heads.

The Wyrm King turned, all hundred heads of it, slowly, to look at him.

“Iiii know I sssaid hhe would fffight, but hhhe hhhas nearly killed one of ussss. And hhhe hhhas not turned yet. I sssay we kill hhhim.”

“Agreeeeed,” hissed the rest of the heads in one voice, revealing fangs, each and every one of them. One of the smaller heads made to strike, and Castiel stabbed it in the neck, ending up drenched in the spurting gout of blackish-red blood.

It was a maelstrom of fighting after that, a desperate battle to stay alive long enough for the shifters to get to him. The snakes bit and snapped and tore him to shreds, scales clawing at his skin and leaving him bleeding, and he raked long bloody furrows that made them recoil, blinded as many as he could and knocked teeth out of their jaws with the hilt of his blade.

But no matter how many he harmed, he could never kill them, and there were always more fresh heads, slithering from between the trees and up from underneath the ground, snapping at his legs and arms and torso, winding around his feet and tripping him up.

He went down hard, blade skittering from numb fingers to be snapped up by a snake, who hissed mocking triumph. Green-amber-black scales filled his vision, cloudy-blue irises and slit-pupils and the flicker of blood-red tongues. He noted with some triumph that they moved slowly, languidly, like they were fighting their way through molasses. Only. . . No. He was the one moving slowly.

The Taint was creeping in past the barrier of his Grace, seeping into the core of what he was, twisting him into something else, something he didn’t want to be, and he no longer had the strength to fight it.

Snakes lunged, and he couldn’t dodge anymore. Teeth hovered just above the field of his vision, sight narrowing until they were the only thing he could see, glittering diamond and grey.

Fire blasted above him, green-gold and blue, a blazing ripple like an inverted sea.  A wave of noise crashed over him, blurring his vision even more with the force of it. He was left alone in the churned mud as flares of fire roiled above his head, greenish ropes lashing back and forth while dragons roared and screamed.

A face appeared above his head, the double-vision of an entity in a vessel shimmering into place. Wide blue eyes, a pale face trimmed with lilac and pale blue feathers, massive violet and blue wings. It was a Messenger, though not one of his brothers. So he was to die in the company of an abomination, a twisted caricature of an angel?

 **“Dumah!”** it shouted, the sound echoing through the air and through angel radio. **“He is Seraphim!”**

 **“Keep him alive! Do whatever you need to!”** the answer came, and the voice was that of his sister (as last he’d seen her), achingly familiar and achingly distant. Even if she had managed to survive the Storm, there was no way she’d want to see him. To save him.

But she’d just said. . .

No. He must’ve misheard.

Dragontongue roared across the sky, answered by a shriek and rolling boom like thunder. A flicker of blue darted across the sky in his vision. Strangely, he could see every detail, down to the twined green-and-gold markings on the wings. They seemed oddly important, those markings, and worthy of destruction.

They needed to be destroyed.

 **“Dumah, he’s Turning!”** and the voice carried the shrill of fear with it. He reached up to silence it, only to have the Messenger pin his arm.

Someone cursed, in English, harsh and grating, and the leather snap of wings sounded just above his head. A massive black and bronze-green shadow stretched overhead, with a smaller section detaching and spiraling down like a leaf, blown on the wind. With a _wham_ of displaced air, a face jutted into his vision, the high cheekbones and tilted eyes familiar, the mane of spikes and golden irises less so. For a second, the mage radiated joy, relief, before that transmuted into worry.

He flattened his hand along Castiel’s chest, and his touch _burned_ , the Taint snaking in his veins writhing away from the fire that licked along the long fingers. It wasn’t actual fire, but he was too addled to do more than register that before he was convulsing, the Messenger pinning him down.

For a second, he thought the mage was winning, the Taint burning into nothing, but it curled deeper into his Grace, bringing it up as a shield against the mage. The mage kept going until he realized what was happening, jolting back, horrified.

The pain didn’t stop, building up in his chest until he couldn’t help but scream, clawing at the ground. The mage roared, desperate.

“ _Dean!”_


	5. Winchesters

_“Dean!”_

Castiel jolted, shocked into silence for a moment. He gritted his teeth and stared, trying to focus on the blurry image above his head. It didn’t look anything like Sam.

But he was a mage, and half-shifted. Didn’t everything except bone structure change during the shift?

Taint curled deeper into his lungs from the greenish gas and he writhed, trying to expel it but not being able to. The mage - Sam - hooked his power into the new Taint and dragged it out before it had a chance to hide. It felt like someone was ripping his veins out from underneath the skin.

Something literally was, the Taint tearing into his skin and bone and flesh even as Sam burned it to nothing, rending him apart from the inside out and filling in the cracks.

Blood filled his throat, choking him, and Sam snapped something at the Messenger beside him, who wavered before pressing two fingers to his forehead, healing him even as the battle of wills and magic inside him tore him apart. It couldn’t heal his Grace, though, too unskilled to manage that.

Sam shouted, the sound rising above all other sound on the battlefield, and was answered with a roar. They screamed at each other for a long minute, before Sam slumped down defeated, resting one hand on Castiel’s chest.

Castiel blinked at him, slowly, feeling his Grace fading and not particularly caring. The Winchesters were alive. _Alive._ He hadn’t left them for dead.

They still cared.

He tried to smile, but the movement turned into an uncontrollable facial twitch that froze itself into a rictus grin as he convulsed, clawing at the ground, vision darkening. Sam caught him, slipped a hand underneath the back of his head to keep him from banging it into the ground.

The seizure relaxed, leaving him panting. Wings thundered beside him, and the Messenger flung itself out of the way as a half-shifted dragon landed, curling in closer to shelter him from the flying blood and flame and venom. He stared up at wide green eyes, the only living things in a mask of shock.

Dean.

Despite the sharp angles of his face and inhuman teeth and the ridge of plates down his spine, it was Dean. Castiel tried to smile, and this time it worked, a frail grin that only lasted until the next convulsion left him panting.

Dean took over the task of holding him, staring up at Sam, who swiped a hand over his face and looked away, ashamed. Green eyes widened, even as Dean’s wings came in closer, protective.

“No.”

“Dean. . . “

“No! No, no. You can’t die! I’m not going to let him die, Sam! I’m not going to watch my best friend who I _just_ found out was alive _die_!”

“We don’t have a choice, Dean. He’s already Turning. If that doesn’t kill him outright. . . “ Sam dropped his head, resting one splayed palm on Cas’s chest, the tip of his tail draping itself over Cas’s ankles.

“No! There has to be something, some spell, some ritual. We could bring in the other angels, see if they can help him. Or. . . or we could get him out of his vessel. If the body’s Tainted, then if we get him a new one-”

“It’s worked itself into his Grace.”

“Can’t you cleanse him?”

Sam didn’t answer.

Castiel tried to reach up and reassure him, but it was like he’d forgotten how. His hand twitched, and Sam grabbed it, smiling. It was clearly fake, but he appreciated the gesture.

When had he become so human?

“Cas? Hey, hey, hey, hey. Stay with me, man, come on. Talk to me.”

“Cas? Dammit, Cas, come on! Snap out of it. Cas. Cas! _Cas!_ _Sammy, do something!_ ”

“Dean, I. . . “ He choked.

When had their souls grown so dim? They’d always blazed before.

Dean whirled to his feet, tail snapping. The head of a snake slammed into the ground in the distance, followed by a dive-bombing dragon. “No. No, no, no. I can’t. . .  He    can’t. . . Turn him.”

“What?”

“Turn him! I am _not_ going to let him die! Turn him, or so help me Chuck-” His voice blurred out with the rest of the world.

\-----

The world tasted like blood, copper and iron and plasma and. . . smoke? He blinked, and the world was thrown into sharp relief, the harsh glitter of sunlight overhead and a face with silver-blue eyes and a short ruff of spikes. He groaned and tried to lever himself up, only to be forced back down on the ground.

The mage stared at him. “Uh, sorry. I, uh, can’t let you do that. Auri! He’s awake.”

Footsteps pounded closer before another head shoved into his vision. “Hey! How you feelin’?” The blonde girl grinned at him, before whipping around to roar into the distance.

“Everything hurts,” he commented, and tried to sit up again. The mage made to shove him back down but the girl gave an indignant snort.

“Dude, let him sit up. He’s not exactly bleeding to death here, you know.”

“But what if he is? There could be internal injuries we know nothing about!” The girl snorted again, and the mage sank back with a muttered “fine, fine”.

“Who are you?” Castiel asked, turning to face them. They grinned at him, backlit by the sinking sunlight. The mage answered, but he didn’t register whatever it was that he was saying, twisting to survey his surroundings and stumbling to his feet.

He wasn’t in the field with the Wyrm King anymore, but a wide alpine meadow, set with tents and strange wooden structures and fenced-off rings and campfires surrounded by dragons. They didn’t even appear to notice him, racing about their business with hardly a glance at anyone else. A blue dragon swept in low over the camp and snagged something off the top of one of the poles erected around the edges, before winging their way back over the horizon. Dragons holding long pole-weapons clashed around the edges of the clearing, while humans darted between their towering forms.

All in all, it was far busier than the camp he’d previously stayed in.

The mage whistled, waving both arms over his head at a tiny dragon who was overseeing a group lifting one of the tall poles. She glanced over, then turned and spoke to one of the humans before bounding over in long leaps. She slammed down in front of them with a thud, one hand resting on the ground.

She grinned up at him, tossing dirty gold hair over one shoulder, and he blinked down at the girl he’d met in the middle of the Appalachians.

“Good you see you up, Castiel. The Commanders were _worried_ !” she laughed, “I’ve never seen them _both_ like that before!”

“So you believe me now?”

“The Commanders say you are who you said you were. Anyways, they’re over in the Rockies handling some ice wyrms and stuff, so you won’t be able to see them until they get back, which shouldn’t be for another, ooh, week or so? So! I will be notifying them of your return to consciousness, and I will leave you in the capable wings of Ruby here,” she flipped one hand towards a medium-sized red dragon with a pair of acidspitter horns, “and go tell them! Indra will be here in about an hour, and this Ruby isn’t demon Ruby, whatever that means.”

“Sam and Dean tell you to say that?” the mage asked

“Iiii-yup. Best be off! ‘Til we meet!” She bolted towards the center of the camp and the open area there, vaulting upwards and shifting in midair, wings thundering as she gained speed and altitude.

Castiel watched her go for a moment, before turning to the mage and dragon still hovering just beside him. “So it was them? Sam and Dean Winchester?”

“Yeah. And Eiluna was right, I’ve never seen them so freaked.”

“Yeah, it was kind of scary. But you’re okay now, right? So they’ll have calmed down?” The girl wavered, before muttering something like “I’ll go see what Gwen’s up to,” and running off, blonde braids bouncing. Castiel turned to the mage.

“They were really that upset?”

“Yeah. I’d better go introduce you to Ruby. She likes to know everything that’s going on in her camp.” He walked away, leaving Castiel to follow. He debated staying where he was for a moment, before walking off across the field.

\-----

Indra met him, like the dragon’d said, an hour later with a shout of “ **CASTIEL!** ” from all the way across the camp. Castiel turned to find him already walking towards him, great wings spread out behind him. He waved from across the camp, green-and-gold wings flaring to lift him up into an easy glide. Castiel watched him go with envy, wishing that he could fly like that. He landed beside him, pulling Castiel into a hug.

**“It’s good to see you alive, brother. We thought we were the last.”**

**“Who did?”**

**“Me, Naomi, Dumah, even Anael. Couple others. After the Storm, Heaven ended up destroyed by. . . something, so we left and came down here, begged sanctuary from the,”** he paused, gulped in a breath, and continued. **“From the Winchesters. They gave it, and we’ve been fighting for them ever since.”**

Castiel turned to face him, stopping in the middle of the open space. Indra dragged him on with a muttered **“can’t stop in the landing spot.”**

**“I would’ve thought that you would never ally yourself with the Winchesters, not after what they’ve done.”**

Indra shrugged. **“Yeah, well, we lost half our numbers the day we left, and it looked like they’d figured out some way to survive. And they’re not that bad once you get to know them.”** Castiel tilted his head at him, and Indra blanched. **“Uh, sorry. Guess you already knew that. Anyways, how did you survive? We haven’t heard anything from you for six years!”**

**“I got on one of the refugee planes to Europe and joined with the Men of Letters there. Only the Winchesters didn’t leave. I thought they were dead, until I saw them. . . how long ago was that?”**

**“Five days. You’ve been out five days. It took the threat of imminent destruction of every single operative in the North Cascades to get Sam and Dean to leave your side.”** He grinned. **“Never thought they’d be that devoted. They’ve asked me to show you around, give you an idea of how the place is run and where we fit in with all of it. Although, with your track record, I don’t think you’ll be asked to blindly follow orders.”**

Castiel nodded, staring at the sky as a pair of dragons fought each other in midair, scrabbling for purchase before one of them got the other in a winglock and brought them crashing down in the middle of the camp. A Messenger came racing up to scold them in dragontongue and offer healing for the long scratches both bore. **“Where did the Messengers come from?”**

**“Seattle, I think. We don’t talk much. They’re kind of snooty.”**

**“But who created them? Angels cannot reproduce.”**

**“Wait, you’re talking about the Nephilim-born?”** He gestured towards a Messenger with one wing.

**“Yes.”**

**“Well, don’t call them Messengers. You’ll just get everyone confused. And Jack did. He’s the son of Lucifer, and powerful enough to do that. And we needed the firepower. Too many shifters were dying.”**

**"Jack’s alive?”**

**“Oh, yeah, you were close to him, weren’t you? Yes, he’s alive. He’s in the Andes now, though, so you won’t be able to-”**

The sky shattered, breaking apart with a roll of thunder and the sudden approach of dark stormclouds, broken into segments by the flare of lightning.

Every dragon was on their feet and in the air in seconds, lunging aloft to face the massive birdlike animal that had suddenly appeared in the sky, backed by frozen lightning that pulsed to some alien heartbeat.

Indra launched himself upwards, shifting to another form, this one with green and golden feathers and patterning, white light radiating from between his teeth. He grappled the thunderbird, winding a whiplike tail around the bird's wings and immobilizing it as they began to plummet.

For a moment, it looked like they hit the camp together, before lightning struck both of them and Indra was flung away by the force of it. Other dragons moved in, but the storm the thunderbird had summoned was in full effect, sweeping them off course and striking dragons out of the sky.

And any dragon that so much as touched the snaking tendrils of the rift was whipped away on the back of the lightning to who-knows-where.

Back in Europe, they’d have had dragons set lightning rods, while humans wielded flamethrowers to take advantage of the flammable feathers, and the bird would’ve been down in half-an-hour at the most. But it didn’t look like that was plausible here. Although some of the mages were throwing flame, more and more were getting hit by the striking lightning, forced to the ground underneath protective domes like umbrellas.

The rift flashed again and someone arrived, and a roar went up as the figure made itself known to the dragons in the sky. Castiel strained to see through the strobing flashes and swirling rainless clouds, only managing to make out a single dark shape flaring with gold and bronze and green. Golden light swept along the edges of his wings, cracking out in sparks that cascaded to the ground like fireworks. He exhaled flame, catching the thunderbird along one wing, and the mages followed him, blasting the thing with fire and ice and acid, until it folded in on itself in midair and crumpled to the ground, hitting the trees with a rending _crash_.

The black dragon swept by overhead, tilting to stare at the camp with one green eye. Castiel watched him fly, and their eyes met, the familiar light of dragonfire blazing behind that familiar iris. He’d seen that dragon before, in the fight against the demons, six months ago. He strained to see the soul behind the scales, and jolted back at the flayed thing he saw, laced through with dragonfire.

He knew that soul.

That was Dean’s soul. Which meant that that was Dean up there. And if Dean was there, so was Sam.

The Winchesters.

Here. Alive. Staring him in the _face_.

The black dragon’s wings stuttered before he recovered, swinging around in a sharp turn that nearly collided with another dragon and slamming into the ground at a jog, tearing up the turf with his hooked talons before he scrambled to a stop, head swinging.

Castiel couldn’t move. What if they hated him? What if they abandoned him for abandoning them six years ago? What if they condemned him for everything he’d done in the past?

Sam swung down off Dean’s back, and Castiel noted the lack of anything to hold on to, even a rope. Dean downshifted all the way, into his fully human form, staring across the field at Castiel like he’d seen - well, not a ghost. He looked fiercer than that when he saw ghosts.

Sam refused to meet his eyes, one hand rubbing absentmindedly at a bandage around his palm and hovering behind Dean, who broke out of his paralysis and stormed across the field, Sam trailing behind.

Castiel braced himself for a punch or a shove or _something_.

Dean grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him into a hug. Sam grinned, reaching out to rest one hand on his shoulder before yanking him in the moment Dean let go.

“Thought you were dead, man.” Dean said, voice choking up and staring down at his feet. Sam let go, still refusing to meet his eyes.

“I thought you were dead as well,” Castiel replied, staring at both of them in turn. “I thought I left you to die.”

“Takes more than that to kill a Winchester, dude,” Dean grinned, slapping him on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger. “Like a bunch of kaiju could kill _me_.”

“Where’ve you been all this time?” Sam asked, finally, _finally_ meeting his eyes. “We’ve been worried half to death.”

“I thought you’d gotten on the plane, so I went, and by the time I realized it was too late they’d shut down all contact. We didn’t figure out there were people alive over here until seven months ago, and I volunteered to be one of the ambassadors.”

Dean stared at him, before yanking him in for another hug, this time with Sam in the mix as well. “I’m just glad you’re back, man.”

Cas smiled. Sam broke away and jogged over to a pile of saddlebags sitting in the middle of a tangle of harness, hauling something pale tan out of one of them.

He held out a wad of tan cloth to Cas, with a strange expression on his face. “I, uh, I found this a few years ago and thought you might like it. It might be a little big, sorry.” Cas shook out the cloth to reveal a long coat, like the one he’d lost so long ago. It was a lot longer than his old one, but the shoulders looked like they might fit.

“Thank you, Sam. This. . . “ He couldn’t even find the words.

Dean grinned. “Come on. We’ve got some catching up to do. “

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not trying to go for a weird, dom-sub relationship here. Dean carries Sam because Sam can't fly unaided, and anyone unable to move fast (eg. fly) ends up dead in this world.  
> This is a scene from a larger work I've been hoping to write, and this was just to test out the world. I hope you liked it, and more will most likely be posted.  
> Thanks, Dancer.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments are welcome.


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